


Jack Kelly (no. 2)

by FanfictionShadow



Series: Newsies Headcanons [2]
Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Exploring a character, I'm sorry I do this to you Jack, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Minor Suicidal Thoughts, Santa Fe, Snyder the Spider, This one's a bit less mild, Warning:, Way Pre-Canon, also implied mental health issues, and his drawing, and his painting, and his rooftop, and still pretty mild on the first, exploring Jack's obsession with Santa Fe, idk - Freeform, oh yeah, sorry I'm really bad at tagging, sorry i forgot that, that's why, this can go with the first or not, very mild on the second one though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-12-26 00:06:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18271817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FanfictionShadow/pseuds/FanfictionShadow
Summary: Jack can't remember a time he didn't dream of Santa Fe.





	Jack Kelly (no. 2)

**Author's Note:**

> Most of this is mild, but just in case, trigger warnings: implied child abuse, implied suicidal thoughts, and if I forgot anything please let me know. Also, yes I love when you read my fics, but if you have any concern about reading them you do not have to! Your mental health is more important than my fics.

Jack can't remember a time he didn't dream of Santa Fe.

  
  
Santa Fe started when he was too young to be an orphan, when his father finally stopped breathing and all that remained of Jack's family was a corpse and a postcard bought for a cent with a pretty sunset and the name of a town out west. Jack was left alone, starving, no place to sleep at night, all he owned in the world being the clothes on his back and the postcard in his pocket. It was cheap, worn, with no writing beyond the town name on the front, but it was memories of a better time, before his father was worked to death and before Jack realized just how bad the world truly was. He was taught to read using the large, blocky letters on that postcard, taught how the sun rose and set every day through the picture. Jack learned how beautiful the world could be, with that postcard, and also how painful, when admiring it one day he got a paper cut. It had been the only pretty object they had ever owned.  
  
It was the only thing from before that Jack took to the streets with him.

  
  
For years, living on the streets, begging for and stealing food, money, water, barely surviving, Jack held onto that postcard. He didn't know what the place pictured was truly like, he knew that the picture was chosen because it made it look nicer and would draw people in, but it still became a dream, being able to escape the dark streets of New York for a place wide open and bright and with fresh air. Jack would dream of beautiful sunrises, and sunsets, and the times in the middle where the sky was the brightest blue or the deepest black and sprinkled with stars, instead of the canvas of gray that New York was shrouded in. He dreamed of the new, bright colors he'd be able to see, of being able to run for the feeling of wind in his hair instead of from the Bulls. Jack would dream of a beautiful place out West, far from New York and its smog, where sunsets like the one on his postcard happened. It gave him a calm feeling, a sense of hope, that the world could be worth it if you just found the right place.

  
  
When Jack was six, he joined the newsies, stealing from some rich man's pocket for enough for thirty papes. He sold them all that day and came back the next, using his thirty pennies to buy sixty papes. He sold most of them, making up stories for the richer folk who came by and looked like they may listen more, and ended up with more than sixty cents due to tips and running away instead of giving change.  
  
Jack decided he liked being a newsie. He still slept on the streets, and he still barely ate, but he had money, now, and soon he was selling a hundred papes a day. With every pape sold, his heart beat just a bit faster, because if he saved enough he could buy a train ticket and leave New York. He could go West, to a place where there were sunrises and sunsets, and where he could breathe in fresh air instead of smog. He just had to save enough, just had to sell enough papes and he could leave the postcard behind for the real deal.

  
  
Jack's first trip to the Refuge happened when he was seven years old and sleeping curled up in an alleyway, huddling among old rags fished out of trash piles, trying to soak in some heat during the nights that were getting too cold too fast. Jack had heard of the Newsboys Lodging House, of course, from the other newsies, but he didn't see the point in paying a nickel each night for a bed when he could sleep just as well on a roof somewhere. Cold winds that night had forced him down, though, forced him to an alley that blocked the harshest blows but not much else and a wish for either a roof over his head or a blanket. But Jack was making do, settling down in his small fortress, and finally dozing off when he heard a shuffling noise coming close. And, tiredly opening his eyes, Jack came face to face with the first of his many trips to the House of Refuge, as a Bull snatched his wrist before he could do more than shift and dragged him out of the alley, down the disgusting streets, and right into hell.  
  
Jack spent a cold winter there, three months in the dark, closed off from any fresh air or feeling of hope. The Refuge was always dark, cold, smelling of excrement and sickness and fear and death. The boys slept overcrowded, three to a bed, among rats and bugs and vermin and with no blankets or even an extra sock. Every day they cleaned for hours, doing chore after chore without rest, and were fed one meager meal a day, too-watery soup or moldy bread. They weren't allowed to share, or help each other with chores, and the larger boys would soak the smaller ones for the best beds or the easiest chore daily.  
  
The worst part was punishment.

  
  
When Jack was shoved into an office, wrists tied together behind his back, and onto a chair he looked up and at the face of the man he stole fifteen cents from to start selling papes - a face that paused when recognition dawned in cold, cruel eyes before turning hard as stone. Jack, watching the eyes of the man before him, saw anger and a perverse gleefulness that confused him - until the door shut behind the Bull and the man slapped him hard across the face.  
  
  
When Jack first got there, he was loud and mouthy with a cocky attitude that kept him, for the most part, untouched by the older newsies who were fine with beating a few pennies out of the younger kids. After... After months of non-stop punishments for helping the younger kids out, for talking back, for standing up for himself to the mocking guards and to Snyder, who always seemed delighted to drag Jack away to try and make him scream; after being thrown into a tiny, cold, disgusting cell and left there for hours or sometimes even days when Snyder got tired of his refusal to break; after three months of refusing to break because that would mean that Snyder won, that the grayness of New York snuffed out the colors of Jack's dreams... Jack changed.  
  
  
When he was released, three months later, into a snowstorm, just a malnourished and injured seven year old - or maybe eight years, now, he didn't know if his birthday passed yet, if he spent a month in there or a year - he ran, ran until he almost passed out, until he collapsed on the first roof he could reach and reached for the postcard, needing to see that there was more to the world than just the dull, awful gray that New York had shown him.  
  
The postcard wasn't there.

  
  
Jack passed out, on the roof and covered in snow, and almost froze to death. Waking himself back up was the hardest thing his body had ever done, and he was tempted to stay there and let the cold and starvation take him just like it took his father, but then he remembered the postcard.  
  
He didn't have the postcard anymore. So he'd have to get a new one.  
  
Jack snuck down from the roof, shivering, and stumbled toward the Bowery. Theaters were easy to sneak into, often having back doors that forgetful employees didn't lock, and even if they did Jack had a hair pin he snitched from a rich girl that he could use to pick the lock. The buildings there were usually warm, and in the morning he may be able to beg some food or money from a rich person walking by, or he could get to the nuns from there easy enough. The most important thing was a theater would have some sort of heat, and something to lie on, and maybe even some leftover paper that could be his new postcard. A theater was safety, safety from the Bulls and the Refuge and the never-ending gray, and Jack stumbled into the first one he could, barely closing the door before collapsing.  
  
Being woken in the morning by a screech, opening his eyes to a beautiful rich woman staring at him in shock, almost made him regret his vow to not let the streets snuff him out.  
  
Almost. Because then the woman smiled at him, introduced herself as Miss Medda, and brought him to the backstage so she could give him warm tea.  
  
It was the first warmth Jack had felt since before the Refuge.  
  
And when she walked out to find him some food, and maybe a blanket, and left him alone with a pencil and paper in the corner of his eye, he went over and reached out, pulling the picture of his postcard from memory, and started trying to copy it.  
  
The picture looked wrong, too wrong, in the gray that matched the city all too well.  
  
So Jack drew the city instead. Scenes from the Refuge, from Snyder's beatings and the disgusting lives being lived there, were drawn in harsh, angry strokes of gray. Rooftops, alleys, being driven to stealing just to survive - the life that a street rat had - was the only thing Jack could bring himself to draw in the gray color of nothing he was surrounded by.

  
  
Jack went back to his hiding place from before the Refuge, back to where he hid all his money, and counted up. His stash hadn't been found in those three months, but even the money he'd already saved still wasn't enough to make it West. Jack found himself trapped more than ever in the harsh, colorless New York streets, again hawking papes every day, dodging the other newsies as they asked him where he'd been and why he'd changed. He couldn't answer them, couldn't explain the lack of color in his life now, couldn't explain the harsh gray lines that replaced the beautiful sunset he used to carry with him everywhere. So few newsies had been to the Refuge and come back out, and even fewer had been in for as long as he had, with the punishments he received. And there was the distance, how he never truly connected to the other newsies or even tried to before he disappeared, how he didn't truly have friends or relationships with the other boys. There was no one and no way to approach him, so he was never approached.  
  
And the times where the others got too close, when there was one too many slaps to his shoulder or shoves to his back, when there was one too many questions or one too many words, he would find himself back at the theater where he met Miss Medda, sneaking in to draw out his nightmares and memories on the torn pieces of paper she left backstage for him. His stash of drawings grew, more and more paper being covered in harsh gray scenes he never let others see. Jack found it cathartic, almost, getting what he saw and experienced out of his head and onto paper, proof that he didn't go crazy inside those dull gray walls, proof that he was out. His pile of drawings grew, and much more slowly, he began to heal.  
  
But he was still missing his color.  
  
So he kept scavenging, and sleeping on rooftops, and selling, trying to make enough money for a ticket. He kept on sketching the gray city along with his gray memories, a reminder of what he'd leave behind once he finally escaped. His stash of drawings exceeded his stash of money, but both were pointing him in one direction - West.  
  
Then one day, hidden away in the back of the theater, Miss Medda found him drawing and looked at the paper before he could hide it. She saw the scene he drew, of ragged-looking newsboys shivering in the snow-covered streets, a few without coats and even one without shoes, a rich man hustling by and ignoring the shouted words. She saw his raw talent, his natural aptitude for drawing; and with that picture she also saw more of him, why he was always ragged, and only had one outfit. And with this extra knowledge Miss Medda decided to help out Jack, at least a little bit, and sat down with him and listened to him explain how there was no color for him in the city, how that gray bled into his very thoughts and emotions.  
  
And Miss Medda offered Jack paint.  
  
And for the first time, Jack cautiously, somewhat clumsily, beautifully painted Santa Fe.


End file.
